THIS WEEK


The Black Issue 2022 Black authors: The data


Breadth of titles by Black authors increases but big names still lead the way Analysis of the bestselling 1,000 authors in


the UK in 2021 shows that, while more Black authors feature and with a broader range of titles, it remains difficult for Black creatives without a platform to break through


Reporting Kiera O'Brien & Natasha Onwuemezi T


he top-selling 1,000 authors for the non-lockdown period of 2021 earned a combined £737.9m, up 2.8% against the same weeks for 2019. The Bookseller identified 30 Black authors among them, who brought in £13.4m between them—1.8% of the total. Compared to 2019’s 22 Black authors in the top 1,000, on a combined £11m, this was up, but only marginally. However, Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, brought in £2.1m alone in 2019, a far bigger chunk than any author or title did individually in 2021. As Nielsen’s top 1,000 authors is by volume, some notable high-earning Black authors fall just outside the remit. Candice Cart- Williams, Michael Holding and N K Jemisin technically sit outside of Nielsen’s Top 1,000 author ranking of the year, as measured by volume, but are included in the chart, ranked


The insiders’ p s perspective


by value. Holding’s Why We Kneel, How We Rise brought in £278,000 in 2021, boosting his total to £289,000 for the year. Cart-Williams’ Queenie, still selling strongly a year on from its paperback publication, joined Empress & Aniya and her Quick Reads title Notting Hill Carnival: A West Side Story to earn a total of £141,643. N K Jemisin brought in £193,948 across 29 separate titles. Mr Michelle Obama tops the earnings chart for 2021, across both his 2020-published auto- biography, A Promised Land, and last year’s Renegades, writen with Bruce Springsteen, which brought in nearly £900,000 in the final two months of the year—helped by its £35 r.r.p. However, in volume terms, Marcus Rashford and Carl Anka were streets ahead, with You Are a Champion shiſting nearly 150,000 copies more than the former


Leodora Darlington COMMISSIONING EDITOR


The right publishers and editors don’t look at publishing Black authors as an opportunistic, trend-driven endeav- our, but more a (in some cases, very overdue) long-term investment. That’s important when acquiring an author: it’s not just thinking about one or two books over the next two years, but the longevity of their career and what the next books after the ones on contract might look like. There has been a tendency in some pockets of publishing to pick up a book by a Black or otherwise underrepre- sented writer and drop the author quite quickly if the book doesn’t work. I don’t know if enough questions—did we position this correctly? Did we give this the best editorial steer? Was our marketing and publicity plan right?—are always asked before making that decision. I would be curious to know what the average


revenue per title is like for Black authors compared to other writers. It’s great to see that total revenue is up year-on-year, and if we exclude the Michelle Obama title, average revenue per author is also marginally up. I hope publishers are continuing to invest in Black authors meaningfully, and this seems to be a positive early signal.


06 20th May 2022


HISTORIAN DAVID OLUSOGA CHARTED IN 14TH POSITION


Natalie Jerome AGENT, CURTIS BROWN


For me what the data reaffirms is how much more work we need to do to diversify publishing and provide greater depth and breadth. The books by Black authors that are commercially successful right now are by household names that cross over, appealing to white and Black readers, or are from authors who have built their audience over time, such as Brit Bennett, Malorie Blackman and Bernardine Evaristo. Another example would be Sir Lenny Henry, whose The Boy with Wings (Macmillan Children’s Books) was the second-bestselling début middle-grade title of last year. It suggests that we are still heavily weighted towards super high-profile Black authors achieving the retail support and visibility that drives commercial success, and we all know commercial success is the true barom- eter of systemic change. It’s interesting that of the top seven Black authors,


only two write literary fiction, especially given the emphasis publishing has traditionally placed on this area for Black authors, and especially over-indexing in writing about trauma. That’s a good sign; I hope agents, commissioning editors and retailers take note.


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